Whew!

On a night “Where the Wild Things Are” is in the midst of a successful opening weekend at the box office, the Rampage and Grand Rapids Griffins were enjoying a wild night at the AT&T Center.

Literally, the tips of my fingers hurt as I furiously tried to keep up with the scoring plays, as the Rampage lived up to their name in zipping to a 6-1 first period lead over the shell-shocked Griffins.

And I was really concerned about how the game report would work out — would I be writing about the three team records the Rampage set in the first period, or how they blew a five-goal lead to a team that is struggling offensively coming into the game.

I told Katie Krausse, the Rampage Media Rep, if the Griffins come back in this one, I don’t think I want to talk to coach… maybe Sean Sullivan. He’ll talk to anyone from Boston, even under a dire circumstance as blowing a 6-1 lead.

No worries though. Thanks to Sully, with a nice play to set up Joel Perrault late in the third period, the Rampage outlasted Grand Rapids, 7-4. Hmm, there’s that Perrault guy scoring another big goal late in the game.

Records Fell Early

The Fire Department Color Guard barely had time to unbuckle the flags from their holsters when Troy Bodie scored the quickest goal in Rampage history just 19 seconds into the game.

Rampage captain, Jeff Hoggan hustled behind the net to get control of the puck, sent it up the right wing boards to defenseman Sean Zimmerman, who ripped a quick shot toward the Griffins’ net where Bodie stood and directed the puck past Daniel Larsson.

For Larsson, the longest night of his career would also be a short one, as he was relieved twice in the period, San Antonio shooters scored on their next five of six shots and carried a 6-1 lead into the second period.

From reading the box score or my story in the paper, you know that Stefan Meyer scored his first Rampage goal since coming over from the Florida Panthers’ organization, Brett MacLean scored twice, while other young Phoenix Phenoms Kyle Turris and Mikkail Boedker added the other goals, Boedker’s coming on a laser beam from the blueline that clanked in off the crossbar.

It was fun, but it was also frustrating, trying to watch for the next red light while writing what was going on. Did you ever mistakenly move your hand just one key over when typing out a note or story? You get some really weird words when that happens.

But you knew one of two things was going to happen to begin the second period — the Griffins would be flying high with little regard to playing defense — or the Rampage would continue their all-out assault on the Griffin goal.

Well, to the Griffin’s credit, the first scenario happened, as the Rampage were outshot 25-11 over the last two periods, including 10-3 in the second period — and that wasn’t even all together as close at it seems on first glance as San Antonio had only one shot in the period with a minute left … one minute.

By the way, the seventh Rampage goal was credited to Perrault, taking the hat trick away from Brett MacLean.

MacLean was in a mini-slump, coming up empty in four games to start the season, but he now officially has three goals in two games, getting one in Houston Friday.

Saturday Sound Bites

Brett MacLean

“We came out strong and had that 6-1 lead after the first. We went into the room saying ‘we can’t let up, we can’t let up’ and we did for a while and let them get back into the game. Credit to them that they battled back hard. It was big getting that goal. (we could) stop holding our breath a little bit.”

On his first goal where he took his time before shooting the puck into the net.

“I think it comes with confidence. It’s like back at juniors when you have more confidence and you knew you had a little more time. It takes that year to adjust to know you do have a little bit of time to make that play. I just had my head up and saw that no one was there and I had enough time to give it a second instead of just burying my head and shooting it and luckily it went in.”

On his recent success on scoring goals

“Hockey is a big game of confidence. Last night was a big relief, I was struggling to begin the year, get that one and roll from there and hopefully I can keep going.”

High marks to Brett as well for how he handles the media. Last year, as a 19-year rookie, MacLean usually went “Walter Berry” on us, one or two word answers shyly spoken into the microphone. Tonight, he’s got the interview rhythm down pat. Now, he just needs to pepper his replies with cliches like, “backs to the wall” et al and he’ll be one his way to the majors.

Matt Beleskey had an assist but also one of the best saves of the game midway through the third period. With the score 6-4, Rampage goaltender Josh Tordjman was under seige and went wide of his crease, opening the door to a Griffin attacker to go behind the net and try to wrap it around and into the cage.

Enter Beleskey, stationed in the slot, who recognized the play and slid toward the goal, blocking the attempt at the post.

“Mostly just reaction. Coach has us coming back hard all the way to the net, so it was lucky I was in place to make the save.”

Lucky for the Rampage that Beleskey listens to the coach.

“You get up early like that it’s pretty hard not to let the team back into it a little bit. There was nothing left for them to lose, you just play all out and run and gun so it’s hard to play against that situation but we figured it out in the third and played a real hard game.”

“We’re feeling good with the record, not feeling real good about how we’ve played. We’ve had a couple of games where we’ve only played the third period and luckily this team is talented enough to come back and get wins. But we’re still looking for that complete game and still working on that.”

Greg Ireland

“We came out flying off the first faceoff. Obviously it’s good to get a start like that. I think the things that are really tough in those games is you have a team now that goes in after the period and they get it from the coach, and you have a team that goes in feeling comfortable and we tried to warn them about that. And what ends up happening is there’s a real shift in momentum. They get one, you tighten up a little bit. They get two, now you’re pressing. We just had to get back and relax. It all comes back to our work level, comes back to being on the same page, on our systems. It looked like in the second period we didn’t have any systems.”

“Kurt (Fraser) and Jim (Paek) are good coaches, they’re proud people, they weren’t about to roll over and die. And they’ve instilled that in their team in the last year and a half. I wouldn’t expect anything less from their team. And that’s the challenge for our team, that we understand that mentality tomorrow. It’s not going to be easy.”

“We have 21 guys under the age of 25. The thing of it is right now there is a lot of free wheeling in our game. We got to get them to play a good north-south game, stop and start, make sure we do the right things here.”

So far, the Rampage lead the division at 5-1-1-0…not bad for a free-wheeling team.